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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 14, 2011

TT: She’s a real dog

January 14, 2011 by ldemanski

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on a show I saw last week in Fort Myers, Florida Rep’s revival of Sylvia, and take note of the Broadway transfer of The Importance of Being Earnest, which I was supposed to see on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s an excerpt.
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Sylvia_10-0357_38083_t607.jpgCleverness, like cuteness, is in the eye of the beholder, so let me start by saying that A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia,” which is being performed with terrific comic energy by the Florida Repertory Theatre, is both clever and cute in all the right ways. First seen in New York a decade and a half ago, Mr. Gurney’s droll tale of a dog who comes between a middle-aged man and his frustrated wife has long since become a regional-theater staple, as well it should be. Not only is “Sylvia” one of the funniest small-cast plays of the past quarter-century, but just beneath the surface it has serious things to say about the travails of what one of the characters calls “the dangerous years…the years between the first hint of retirement and the first whiff of the nursing home.” Moreover, Mr. Gurney says them so amusingly that you almost fail to notice the sharp bite of the medicine of truth.
The trick to “Sylvia” is that the title character, a stray poodle-Labrador mix, is played by a young woman (Michelle Damato) who is capable of conversing with her master (Gordon McConnell) and mistress (Carrie Lund) when no one else is around to eavesdrop. Greg, who found her in the park one day, is deep in the throes of a work-related midlife crisis. Accordingly, he falls for Sylvia in much the same way that another man might fall for a younger woman, much to the horror of Kate, his wife, who didn’t want a dog in the first place and really doesn’t want one on whom her husband dotes to the exclusion of everyone else, Kate included. Stir in a third actor (Chris Clavelli) who plays three smaller roles, two of them in drag, and you get a recipe for Gurney-style comedy…
Ms. Damato is entirely delightful in the canine role created Off Broadway by Sarah Jessica Parker in 1995. Her frisky body language and dead-sure comic timing couldn’t be bettered. Not that her colleagues are anything other than right on the button: Here as in the two previous Florida Rep shows I’ve seen, you get the feeling that you’re watching a permanent ensemble at work on stage, one whose members know and trust one another….
Speaking of drag acts, the smartest one ever to come my way is currently doing business in Manhattan: The Roundabout Theatre Company has brought to Broadway Brian Bedford’s brilliantly zany Stratford Shakespeare Festival staging of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” in which the veteran classical comedian dons wig and gown to play Lady Bracknell.
As I wrote in this space when I saw the production in Canada two summers ago, “I don’t care for camped-up drag acts, but Mr. Bedford, who makes himself up to look like Queen Victoria and carries himself like a snooty gargoyle, is giving us something completely different, an impersonation so sharp-witted and closely observed that it demands to be accepted on its own daring terms”…
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Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

January 14, 2011 by ldemanski

“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making.”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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